Is Agile going postal on us?

 

Apparently so, as this article from FCW titled “USPS goes all-in on agile development” indicates that the US Post Office has “one of the largest and most complex in the world, and its growing preference for agile software development methods over its old-school waterfall methodology is having a positive effect on both the agency's bottom line and the mailing industry as a whole.”

Started in 2010, they launched Agile as the replacement model for their existing waterfall methodology in four major distribution centers.  One of the major pilot projects was the Mail Transport Equipment Online Ordering System (MTEOR) that “allows mailers to order and track mail transport equipment (MTE) online, such as the sacks, trays, pallets and wheel containers that contain mail in transit between facilities.”  Looks like by adopting Agile, they were able to achieve some significant results such as a 90% reduction in phone calls to their support center and cost reductions.

Due to this, the USPS has now set a policy to do Agile for all IT development projects:

Agile software development methodologies and best practices – Scrum, Scrumban, software engineering best practices and the like – are now applied to most every project within USPS' IT shop, Edgar said. In fact, USPS IT has delivered more than 50 projects through agile development methodologies, and 25 projects are currently active. Design teams work with customers "almost daily," and communication between parties is integral to a project's success.

So many project successes just three years into USPS' five-year agile adoption strategy roadmap helped spur the agency in March to declare that the agile development methodology will be the standard methodology for all projects unless an exception request is approved.

So in a sense, the USPS is going Agile to avoid “going postal” with launching software development projects and I would think that would be a good thing.